


Elio and Oliver: From Reunion to Retirement

by skamtrash8903



Category: call me by your name - Fandom, cmbyn
Genre: Fluff, Gay, Love, M/M, cute asf, lil smut but not really, wanted to keep it pure✨
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26713924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skamtrash8903/pseuds/skamtrash8903
Summary: No summary, just read the darn thing!
Relationships: Oliver & Elio Perlman, Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	Elio and Oliver: From Reunion to Retirement

The plane ticket sat on my desk. I felt as though it was making a joke out of me, like it knew better than I did about what was to come and was holding in its laughter. I stared at it, focusing my gaze on the destination printed under the time of departure: Crema, Italy. 

It was May. He and his parents were always at the villa by then. I had called the pro and asked if he'd be so kind as to not tell Elio of my arrival, and he agreed. I was eager to see him, and even more eager to touch him. I'd finished packing weeks ago, on the day I bought the ticket. Packing everything with haste made me feel free; it made me feel as though I was finally letting myself out of the cage in which I had so long been entrapped. I was folding up the life I had pretended to enjoy and leaving it behind. 

It had been five years since I'd last seen Elio and the Pearlmans, and they didn't know about what had happened with Micol: I told her everything two months before our wedding. Our engagement had dragged on and on due to my unwillingness to go through with wedding planning, for which I conjured up excuse after excuse ranging from bad weather to appendicitis. I finally realized that Micol wouldn't let me make up a convenient excuse this time, so we had set a date. Every night after setting that date I cried myself to sleep silently, pretending that he was beside me. My misery eventually followed me into the daylight, and Micol began to ask me why I was so despondent. This chain went on for months, until I decided to end it. I called her from work and asked if she'd meet me for coffee. We sat in the back of a cafe and I told her everything: Elio, my identity, my depression, how sorry I was for leading her on, how I didn't even know I was leading her on because I was so convinced that I was happy. When I told her, she wasn't angry; she said all she wanted was for me to be happy. That was that. It was much easier than I thought it would have been, and much more freeing than the prospect of a life with a woman that I saw more as a friend than a lover. Micol accompanied me when I told my parents as well. I told her she didn't need to, but she said she really wished to support me. I thanked her for this and told her that she deserved much better than me, but she just shook her head in the way that she always did and kissed my face. I thought in that moment that she was probably the best friend I'd ever have. 

We drove to my parents' house one weekend, and the car was silent until we were sitting in the driveway. I looked Micol in the face and told her I couldn't do it, told her that I'd made a mistake and that we should just get married, but she persisted (I was thankful for this later). She took my hand and led me to the front door. I knocked. They came out with smiles and laughs and questions about the wedding that they'd been waiting "so damn long" to attend, and my heart melted in my chest, the magma spreading all throughout my body. The shame of what I was about to do was burning me alive. 

We chatted awhile. It was a conversation complete with all the perfunctory little nods and phrases one uses with their estranged parents, until my mother asked me why I looked so pale.

I figured this was it. Micol squeezed my hand, and I noticed she had taken off the ring. At the sight of her bare finger, I felt at peace. That ring on her finger was like pounds of rocks in my pockets, pulling me down, down, down.

"I have to tell you guys something and no, before you ask, she isn't pregnant," I spoke slowly, trying to articulate every word although my mouth felt like it was full of cotton. 

They stared at me with bewilderment for a few seconds, and I thought of running out the door, getting in the car and driving myself into a river.

"Let's hear it, Ollie," Micol said softly, her face kind and gentle. I really did love her, and as I stood there in the hallway of my childhood home I wished more than anything that I loved her as I knew I should have. I didn't, though, and I knew I'd never love a woman in that way.

All I wanted was to be able to love a woman in that way. It frustrated me that I couldn't back then, as if I were broken or defective and would never truly be a man because of it. 

I looked my parents in their stern, baleful faces and uttered the words I had spent 29 years pretending didn't apply to me: 

"Mom, dad, I'm gay."

In the back of my head I saw him as the words fell out, and nothing I had ever said before then felt as true. They stared at my face, watching as the man they thought they knew fell to pieces and turned to soot on the floor in front of them. I figured they would disown me, maybe even cart me off to a correctional facility as I had told Elio my father would. I looked down at my feet and let the tears fall down my face. I wasn't a crier. I was never truly inclined to cry, I'm still the same way, but in that moment everything I had ever felt came flooding up to my eyelids and fell down my face. It was intensely cathartic to let it all out in front of these people, my own parents, around whom I had been walking on eggshells since I was fourteen. 

My mother began to cry. She then came very close to me, kissed my head, and told me she loved me. She held my face in her warm hands, and I hugged her. In my head, I was thinking about how glad I was that she hadn't said that she had known. I didn't want to hear that all the time I wasted being afraid had been for nothing because she already knew and was okay with it. I didn't want to hear that I could've told her years ago and she wouldn't have given a damn. I was glad she didn't know, or at the very least, I was glad she didn't say it aloud.

My father followed closely behind her, and I had never seen him look sorry before in all the time I'd been his son. He hugged me tightly and asked if he could apologize. The hug was not sweet or reassuring, but suffocating and cold. I could feel his knuckles going white as he gripped the back of my neck with his hand. I thought he might be trying to suffocate me right then, but he eventually pulled back. When he was facing me again, I could see the flames settled behind his eyes and the vein in his forehead throbbing lightly, purple with rage. Micol wouldn't be able to recognize the contempt in my father's face, but I could practically smell it. He began to speak, holding my mother's hand so tightly I thought her fingers might explode.

"Oliver, I love you. I know I haven't always been the best father, and I know I haven't ever been very warm to you. It's not in my nature, I suppose, that warmth; however, you're my son and I love you dearly despite my shortcomings in showing it. This doesn't affect anything."

When he said that to me, I hated him more than I ever had in my entire life. All the jokes he had made came flashing back to my head, echoing through my mind like a scream in an empty cathedral. All the times he had called my fellow classmates faggots in high school, the times he would pull me aside when I introduced him to a new girlfriend and say, "She looks like a dude, Oliver. What are you, a queer?" I knew the moment he said the words "this doesn't affect anything" that he would lock himself in the bathroom immediately after Micol and I had left and call every single conversion camp and pastor within a 5000 mile radius, demanding that they fix me. He said it doesn't affect anything, but I know my father: it affects everything. He would now pretend that he never had a son when he met new people without my mother around, and he would never ask me over to see him ever again. The next time I would see him would be when he was in his casket.

I told them both that I would be leaving to Italy in a few weeks, and that the wedding was off. They asked me why I'd be going to Italy, and my face became red and beads of sweat began to drip down my back like raindrops on a car window. 

"There is someone there. A man. His name is Elio. I met him on my trip that summer a few years ago, and we fell in love. We were together while I was there, but I haven't seen him or heard from him since save for the occasional phone call on holidays. He's, without any sliver of doubt, the one. I was terrified to be with him, and even more terrified to tell you I wanted to be with him, but I want him. I want a life with him. So, I'm going."

My father looked at me, and for a second I really, truly thought he was going to kill me. Before he could say anything, I spoke,

"Father, don't bother calling the pastor or any of those conversion camps. They're a waste of time and money. I slept with a guy for the first time at that religious summer camp you sent me to; his name was Andrew, and he was beautiful. You can't change me, no matter how hard you pray for it. You're a bastard, a piece of garbage. I can't wait to spit on your grave. Never contact me again." 

It had been the first time I'd ever stood up to my father. I didn't get a good look at his reaction because Micol had pulled me out of the house the minute I was done. She yanked the sleeve of my shirt and dragged me out to the car, plopping down in the driver's seat next to me and immediately driving away. 

"That was fucking fantastic, Ollie."

I laughed for a long time. Micol laughed with me. Then I cried. She cried. We smiled and ate gas station doughnuts on the side of the road.

—

My mind snapped back to where I was. I was still staring at the ticket, and the hours had rolled by like soft waves onto the sand. I retrieved my bags from the corner of my apartment that I stored them in, opened up the door for the last time, and left. I had spoken to my landlord already, as well as my employer at the time, and they were both aware I wouldn't be returning. I felt like a puppet that had suddenly cut all his strings, emancipating himself from his masters and learning to walk all on his own. I flagged down a taxi, gave the man the address of the airport, and before I knew it I was boarding the flight. 

It was an easy flight. Long, as I remember it being when I visited the Pearlmans for Christmas the year we met, but relaxing. I had finally settled it all in my head: Elio, Micol, my parents, my career, my everything. My book had come out a few months after I left Italy, I had gotten my doctorate, and I had been working as a professor at Columbia before I made my decision to leave. I knew I'd be able to start up teaching again once I arrived, and I'd also be able to continue writing my second book. Everything was in line. 

A few hours before we were to land the woman seated next to me asked where I was going. I looked at her, smiled, and replied kindly:

"I'm going to see the man I love."

Her eyes went wide and she began digging through her purse, which was an old brown leather bag that she was keeping at her feet. In a matter of seconds, she revealed a stack of photographs. They were all polaroids, and they depicted two women embracing and kissing each other. A smile spread across my face as I realized one of the women was her. 

"I'm going to see the woman I love."

As soon as she said that, the world suddenly became clear to me for the first time. I had spent the majority of my life being who I wasn't and loving those I truly couldn't love just because I had it in my head that my love was invalid and that I wasn't truly a man if I loved other men. I was sure this woman had felt the same way: I could see it in her eyes. There is a pain that comes with being someone that you feel is different, but eventually it all makes perfect sense. Seeing this woman on this plane was the moment in which I finally felt like a man and I finally felt proud of the love I shared with Elio. There was so shame in it, and there never was. I had allowed myself to become so consumed with painting a portrait of the man I wanted to be that I had missed out on the one of the man I already was. I made a vow to myself that I would never feel ashamed again, especially not of Elio. The world is a much darker place when you don't allow yourself to love or to be loved. The light had finally spread itself out in my chest.

I felt alive.

The woman and I walked together to baggage claim, and then I watched as she recognized her lover in the crowd of people waiting to be reunited with their own weary travelers. 

I hugged her goodbye, a woman I barely knew but somehow had known for my entire life simply through being who I was, and she went off. They looked beautiful together as I watched them walk away, and I couldn't wait to tell Elio about them.

Once again, I got into a cab and gave the man the address of the villa. My Italian had improved greatly since my last visit, and the man was impressed when I mentioned that I was American. I felt proud of myself for this, as if it were a possibility that, if I hadn't told him I was American, maybe he would've taken me for an Italian. We drove in silence, and I looked out the window of the small yellow cab the entire way there. I watched as the buildings and churches and people flew past the window, and I imagined my life passing by in that same way. Everything up until Elio had passed by exactly like the views in a car window, quickly coming into view and fizzing out before it had really begun. I had found him before it was too late, though, before everything flew by and I was in the grave wishing I had taken a bite out of my own life.

I was finally going to do it the right way. 

I was going to love him unconditionally and never leave him again.

Before I knew it, we had arrived. 

I climbed out of the cab, got all my luggage out of the trunk and paid the cabbie. He drove away as I stood there, facing my new life, the one I had been wanting to live.

I knocked.

He was on the other side of the door.

"Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine," I breathed.

His face lit up, his beautiful face. He wrapped his arms around my neck and nuzzled his head into my chest. I sighed with relief and held him, palming at his brown curls with my right hand. Eventually, he backed up and looked into my eyes, which just about killed me.

"Elio, Elio, Elio," he sighed.

I cupped his face, leaned into his ear and nibbled it slowly. Then I echoed back, "Oliver, Oliver, Oliver,". 

I kissed him then, hard, like I hadn't any air to breathe and he was an open field of breeze. He kissed me back, and I knew then that it was the same, and it would always be the same. 

I pulled back, still holding his face in my hands as if it were a delicate bird that needed safety and care. I looked into his eyes.

"I've never told you, although I'm sure you know already, but I love you, Elio. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you standing in the window with Marzia, and I've been in love with you every day since. I'm sorry that I waited so long to come back and be with you, and I hope you'll say yes, but I want you to marry me. I'm tired of being 'good', although being with you is the best I'll ever be. I want us to grow old and dreadful together. That is, if you'll have me."

"Oliver, I will. I'll marry you, I'll have you, whatever you'd like to call it. You're the only thing I've ever really wanted," he said with a smile spread across his glorious face. 

"I don't have a ring. Would you like a ring?"

"I'd like you, but a ring wouldn't be so terrible either, I suppose," he was crying.

"Angel, don't cry. I'm never leaving again," I said to him, trying to console him the way I had done years ago.

"You've got to promise. Promise me that this time is for the rest of the days that we've got on this earth, Oliver. Promise me that you aren't going to run off with some girl again," he spoke harshly, but in such a way that I wanted nothing more than to kiss him. 

"I promise. All of it. I've packed up my life and I'm moving it here. With you. I left her and I've told my parents and my work, Elio," I said.

"Alright."

"Alright? You believe me?" I said, incredulous.

"You've never lied to me, Oliver. Even back then you never once said that you'd drop it all for me. It's not like I don't trust you, because I do. I'd bet my life on you, if you'd really like to know, but I had to hear you say it."

"Well, I did."

"And so you did, my love," he said, eyes bright and glassy with sweetness.

"You're a dream, Elio," I told him, and then I kissed him again, this time without planning on stopping until I had tasted every inch of his skin. 

We kissed for so long that I was dizzy with want, but then he suddenly pulled back with a look of shock plastered onto his face. 

"Wait—you told your parents about me? I mean, about you?" He asked me, and I could tell he was proud before he said it. I liked having him be proud of me.

"Yes, I did. They know I'm gay, they know I'm in love with you, and they know I'm here," I stated happily, but I used a softened tone because all of a sudden I felt so in love my knees could've probably given out on me.

"Oh, Oliver. My Oliver. I'm so proud of you. I love you. I love you I love you I-"

I kissed him slowly and with all the love for him I had in my body. I wanted him to feel how much I loved him. 

We made love all night.

We made love many, many nights after that.

—

Our wedding was beautiful and simple.

It happened 4 years after the story I've just told you.

We had it at the villa, and my mother and Micol came for it. 

It was the happiest day of my life.

Elio had decided that he wished to walk down the aisle with Sami and be presented to me at the altar, and I cried like a bitch when it actually happened. He looked so beautiful and happy, and I couldn't believe that this man loved me. 

When it came time for vows, I held Elio's hands and simply told him what he already knew.

"Elio, my love, my world, you are everything to me. When I saw you in the window of this very villa, I knew you were the one for me. Everything that happened after only confirmed it. When you played that Bach song for me and you kept changing the goddamn rhythm, I knew it even more still. Looking at you today, knowing that you'll be my husband in a few moments, it brings me joy that I've never felt in my life. You read my mind, you love me hard, and you color this world of mine that was once very dark. You already know this and the words truly don't seem to be enough, even in all the languages you speak, but I love you unconditionally and forever. Even if you get a nosebleed at the dinner table," I sobbed my way through it, and by the end Elio had wrapped his hands around my neck and held me before his share of vows. 

"Oliver, there are many things that seventeen year old me had wished to say to you before you left him at that train station in Rome, but he never mustered up the courage to do so. Luckily for us, I wrote them all down the day before you left. I would like to read them to you now, as they still reign completely true. 'Dear Oliver, or should I say Elio, I am writing this letter to tell you that I have fallen in love with you. In fact, I don't believe there was ever a day that I didn't love you. I believe that I have always loved you, but couldn't put a face to that love until I met you. I love the way you say things, the way you laugh, the way you underestimate yourself and call your writings "drivel," even when they give Proust a run for his money. I love you, and I have the most dreadful feeling that I'll never be able to love anyone as I love you. Perhaps you'll be the only person I'll ever truly love. I hope that I have shown you this before you've left; if not, I'll read it to you someday if I see you again.' I was in love with you then, and I will be until the day I die. I will always choose you."

He was crying. Even his tears were beautiful, that bastard. 

—

Our marriage is more wonderful than I could've ever imagined.

You are sitting next to me now, holding my hand and staring at me, waiting for me to finish writing so that I'll kiss you. 

God, I love you.

—

We have been married 30 years, and very happily so.

We hold each other in bed every night. This is something I look forward to when I'm having a bad day at work, and I know he does too.

We make love so often our friends joke that we may be nymphomaniacs, but this just seems so silly to us.

How could we not make love often? 

I mean, even the way he's standing there now, leaning against the window and petting our cat is beautiful.

He's just turned his head to look at me, his eyes soft and full of the love I know so well.

"Ollie, come give me a hug."

—

I did hug him. I set my notebook aside and got up from the couch, walking across the living room to the large windows he was standing in front of.

I grabbed his hand, kissed it, and wrapped my arms around his tiny, beautiful waist. He slung his arms around my neck and nestled his head into my shoulder, sighing with content like he does when I hold him, which is often. I settled my face in the crook of his neck, leaning my nose deeply into his skin and taking in his scent as I do when he holds me, which is also often. 

I lifted my head up after a while because I just wanted to kiss him so badly. The soft, comforting buzz of mid-morning desire had begun feasting on my blood, and I needed to feel his lips.

His head was still comfortably tucked into my shoulder, so I leaned my head back down and whispered in his right ear,

"Elly belly."

The skin on his neck always gets raised and bumpy when I whisper in his ears, and I love it more and more every time. He raised his head from my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. His eyes are always soft and glowing in the morning, almost like there's a film of glossy paper over them. He put his right hand on my cheek and used his thumb to feel my bottom lip. Then, he started to speak, hoarse and quiet like his voice always is in the morning,

"Ollie, kiss me."

When he calls me Ollie, I am absolutely done for. I would throw myself into a volcano if he asked me to, so long as he said, "Ollie, jump into the volcano!"

I put my forehead against his, rubbing the back of his neck with my hands as I stood there, basking in his light. 

After what seemed like a very long, very quiet couple of millennia, I tilted my head down and kissed his lips.

So soft, so pink, so warm.

I love Elio's lips. I love everything about him, of course, but those lips are just deadly. 

He kissed me back, slowly and softly, chaste but also with the lingering scent of desire wafting up into my nostrils as he sucked on my bottom lip. 

There was no rush to it, that was the beautiful thing: slow love-making in the glow of the morning sun.

He ran his pretty piano-playing fingers down my arms, breathing into my mouth, hot and sweet. I pushed my hands up underneath his sweater, just wanting to feel his warm skin and absorb his heat through my fingertips.

He pulled back from our kiss and kissed both my cheeks, then my nose, my eyelids, my chin, and then my lips once more.

"You're so gorgeous, Ollie," he spoke with the kind of sincerity that shoots you in the heart, making sure you believe every word he says.

"You, my love, are a work of art," I said, mirroring his loving honesty. 

"Can I touch you?" I asked him, wanting to make sure, even after all the years and all the love-making, that he was comfortable.

"Yes...yes...yes," he answered, looking me straight into my eyes as he did.

With that, I pushed my hands up farther on his back until his sweater was off. It was a blue one I had bought him for his birthday a few months ago. I saw it in the store and couldn't help but get it for him—he just looks so damn good in blue. 

I felt his body with my hands, nuzzling my face into his hair while I did so. He was working his hands up under my t-shirt, an old one from a friend that I can barely remember. His hands were everywhere, all at once, and I couldn't get enough.

I started to kiss his neck, which I know he loves, and he giggled and sighed, which I love. I wanted to kiss his chest, but before I knew it he was sliding off my t-shirt and kissing mine.

"Baby," I huffed, tossing my head back lazily as I let myself sink into the feeling of Elio kissing my nipple.

"Ollie, come here," he said after a few moments.

I looked up immediately and saw in his eyes that he wanted me to kiss him. Of course, I did.

I grabbed his face gently, but with intent, and kissed his lips. In an instant, our tongues were in each other's mouths. I was in heaven, and I knew he was too. I love feeling Elio's tongue in my mouth while he kisses me, it just goes straight to my crotch when he does it.

His hands were pawing at my hair, making chills run down my spine in the best way. 

While we kissed I started to palm at Elio's crotch, feeling that he was already completely hard. I smiled slyly into the kiss, an accomplished man. 

He moved his hands from around my neck to my crotch as well, except he slipped his hand into my sweatpants and started to rub at my dick. 

God, I love this man.

—

I’m sitting in bed next to you. You’re reading a book of sheet music and humming to yourself. I sometimes wonder if you know that you’re humming to yourself, but I asked you once and you said,

“The music plays in my head. If it decides to use my voice too, let it be.”

I love that you hum to yourself. Sometimes, you hum one specific section of the orchestra and start to tap your foot to another section’s part. If it’s a complicated piece, you listen to it with your headphones on and your eyes closed, almost like you’re letting it sink into you. When you finish listening to it once all the way through, you hum it for the rest of the day and usually play it on the piano after dinner. I like to sit on the couch in the living room and watch you play. You look so beautiful when you play.

You’ve just closed your book.

You’re moving over to my side of the bed.

You’re holding me.

I’m putting this down now.

—

Fin, for now.


End file.
